Before they were on Netflix: The trading cards of OVW's Wrestlers

When a professional wrestler debuts on a large platform, wrestling collectors take notice. Recently, Nick Wayne and Billie Starkz debuted on AEW, and LA Knight has become one of the highlights of SmackDown, so the fans who paid attention and invested early smiled big. Well, a whole new crop of professional wrestlers are about to make their big time debut on Netflix. The men and women of Ohio Valley Wrestling, featured in the new streaming series Wrestlers (dropping September 13), are bound to make a lot of new fans, and some of those fans, like myself, are going to want their trading cards.

As of this writing, there’s no official OVW set of trading cards featuring the current talents seen on Wrestlers (although there is one from 2012), but you might be surprised to learn that several on the roster have already been featured on an assortment of wrestling trading cards.

Now, please keep in mind, I’m intentionally not including the OVW rosters of days gone by. If you want cards of John Cena, Batista, Randy Orton, or Brock Lesnar, chances are you know where to find them. But if you’re interested in the stars of the future, if you’re interested in cards of the stars of Wrestlers, this article is for you.

First, the current OVW National Heavyweight Champion, “Mr. Pec-Tacular” Jessie Godderz, has a whole slew of cards from his time with TNA Impact. According to Beckett, Godderz has 75 different wrestling cards, all with TNA Impact, with his rookie card being from the 2012 TRISTAR TNA Impact TENacious set. This card is from a subset called “When I was 10,” where on the back of the card, Godderz talks about his childhood dream of being a wrestler and bodybuilder, and one especially cool detail about this card is that it features an OVW logo on it, which I had never seen before, but I’ll definitely be looking for from now on.

According to my research, and yes I’m a professional librarian, so I’m going to call it research, several of the talents on the current OVW roster have trading cards in either of two independent wrestling card sets, Raw Deal Indy Cards and/or The Seated Senton Pro Wrestling Trading Cards. Thankfully, WrestlingTradingCards.com has thorough checklists of both of these sets of wrestling cards, and scanned images of many of them, as well, but if you actually want to get your hands on these limited and rare wrestling cards, that is when the real challenge will commence.

Let’s begin with 2019-2023 Raw Deal Indy Cards, inspired by the WWE Raw Deal turn based card game from 2000, because they started making wrestling cards earlier. The one OVW star they feature the most is “The Queen of the North” Freya the Slaya. According to WrestlingTradingCards.com, Freya received her first Raw Deal Indy Card in June 2021, but has an additional Gimmick Card, Signature Moves Card, and a Striking Card, as well, so she’s definitely well liked by the makers of Raw Deal Indy Cards.

Another OVW talent with a Raw Deal Indy Card is “The Baddie” Leila Grey, who many might already know from her time spent with (and against) Jade Cargill on AEW. Grey received her first Raw Deal Indy Card in April 2021, shortly after her AEW debut, but surprisingly, she doesn’t have a single AEW card, as of yet, despite the fact that she’s wrestled for the company and/or ROH for over two years.

Raw Deal Indy Cards tweeted/posted on June 15, 2021, “Friendly reminder that you can only purchase Wrestler Cards from wrestlers directly,” so unless you’re lucky enough to find these cards on the secondary market, the only way you might still be able to purchase these cards of Freya and Leila Grey are directly from them, and after Wrestlers debuts on Netflix, I’m sure their merch price is bound to go up.

The Seated Senton began as a wrestling fanzine in February 2021, featuring work by SlamWrestling contributor John Cosper, and they had a run of five issues, with their final (for now) issue releasing in May 2022, but they started making wrestling cards in 2022, and in a relatively short amount of time, they’ve managed to create trading cards of a number of OVW wrestlers now seen on Netflix.

According to WrestlingTradingCards.com, these cards “have a print run of 100, with 50 sold through their online store, and the other 50 sold directly through the wrestlers who are on the card,” so while fans have a limited chance of purchasing these cards online, they’re still quite rare, and all of the cards on the the Seated Senton Pro Wrestling Trading Cards checklist are currently sold out.

The first current OVW wrestler featured on a Seated Senton wrestling card was HollyHood Haley J, who tag teams for Women of Wrestling with her mom, Big Rig Betty, with her very own Series 2 authentic autograph card.

In series 3, the Seated Senton released an authentic autograph card of standout tag team, and recent AEW and ROH talent, The Outrunners, Truth Magnum and Turbo Floyd, who the Seated Senton liked so much they made them a second authentic autograph card.

In the fourth series of Seated Senton Pro Wrestling Trading Cards, “indie legend” Cash Flo, profiled in SlamWrestling by the previously mentioned John Cosper, got what appears to be his first trading card in his long career.

And even though he may not technically be on the roster, per se, he gets a lot of camera time on the show, so I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that Al Snow has more wrestling cards to his name than anybody else on the cast of Netflix’s Wrestlers. According to Beckett, Snow is featured on 210 different wrestling cards, with his first being a 1998 Comic Images WWF Superstarz rookie card of him and Head.

It’s possible there’s others I might have missed, in fact I’m sure of it, and I hope readers will educate me on which other OVW talents seen on Wrestlers have wrestling trading cards, but that’s something I love about wrestling cards. With most “stick and ball” trading cards, there’s typically a direct line to an athlete’s first/rookie card, because the modern market is dominated by licensed products, so it’s rare for players to have cards that aren’t mass produced by Topps or Panini, but the outlaw nature of professional wrestling, especially independent professional wrestling, insures that there is a market for limited, hard to find, hidden gems of wrestlers well before they make their big debut.

The current OVW roster is in a unique position, having their stories showcased on arguably the largest streaming platform in the world. They’re going to get a lot of attention and make lots of new fans. I assume it’s only a matter of time before there’s some sort of OVW Wrestlers set of trading cards, but in the meantime, wrestling fans and collectors will enjoy hunting for the trading cards they had before they made it big.